“What changes inspire the regent to assemble a full council or recall a convocation dead for generations … or cause a desire for dilapidated instruments and moldy sheets of music?” Wendra asked.
“What I know would be only half the truth, and not rightly spoken of here. Besides, there’s no time to waste on unsafe roads.” He pulled his legs up and spun to face forward again. “You’ll have questions, I’m sure. Those at the cathedral can answer them for you better than I. You rest. I’ll stop at nightfall, but just long enough to brew some koffee and rest the team. We should get to Recityv tomorrow.”
Wendra looked up at the leaves and sky passing in a mosaic against the failing sun. She could smell the brass and wood of the wonderful instruments Seanbea still carried, the dusty smell of old parchment. As the wagon creaked northward, Wendra kept firm hold of Penit’s small hand.
“Just wait,” the boy said, his smile unfailing. “I’ll take care of you.”
Wendra placed her other hand over Penit’s sturdy fingers.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
A Quiet Cradle
When the greater light pushed up from the distant mountains before them, Braethen saw an end to the Scar. A thin line of green on the horizon spoke of life and growth. The promise in the color brought emotion to his throat. He had almost forgotten the simple beauty of foliage, and he found himself eager to reach it, to put the Scar behind him.
Grant had given instruction to his wards, taking them by the hand one by one before departing. For all his bitterness, he remained the common bond each of these abandoned children clung to in the waste of the Scar. In a real way, he was their father.
He was a shadow, Braethen thought, exiled by an order penned on official stationery, a man who, though he had lived here for nearly twenty years, had not aged as he traced the growth of this arid, wounded land. Yet this shadow also preserved the lives of children in a place so lonely and harsh that the only meaning in their lives seemed to be what they gave one another. Respect spread in the sodalist’s bosom for Grant. What had he done to deserve this punishment?
Grant motioned to the right and angled his horse in a southeasterly direction. They followed the exile down a short slope into a featureless plain that ran outward in a pattern of grey and white earth less populated with sage and barren of trees, save one. A hundred strides from the base of the hill stood the lone tree, its branches dead to even the memory of its leaves. The trunk rose in a gentle twist of bleached wood, like bone left in the sun. Thick limbs snaked away from the trunk, ending in jagged snarls as if snapped off long ago. The bare branches offered no shade from the greater light, which rose hot in the sky even in these earliest moments of day. Braethen realized for the first time that the heat in the Scar came up from the earth as much as down from the heavens, as though the soil had no use for the sunlight, which it caught for only a moment before releasing again.
Grant stopped and slid effortlessly from his saddle. He crossed a few strides to the tree; a hollow had been carved directly into the trunk. The man paused there a moment, looking up at the tree the way Braethen might an old friend, though one he might like soon to forget. Grant then placed his head at the hole and looked inside. When he pulled away, his face was contorted by a grimace so ugly and full of pain that Braethen turned from the sight of it.
Both Mira and Vendanj dismounted and started toward the tree. Grant held up a hand to stop them. “No. The cradle is my responsibility.” He waited a moment longer, his face slowly returning to the dispassion Braethen had seen the exile wear in his home. Then Grant looked back to the hollowed tree and reached inside. With a sudden jerk, he grabbed something and ripped it from the hole. His iron fist grasped a snake that writhed in his hand. A snarl twisted Grant’s lip before he simply squeezed the serpent so tightly that its movement stopped. The dead snake hung limp in his hand, the exile unwilling to relinquish his death grip over the reptile.
Braethen slipped off his horse and strode to where Mira and Vendanj stood watching. Perhaps the man harbored a distaste for serpents. Grant finally dropped the lifeless creature to the dry ground; the snake fell in a heap. Blood coated the exile’s fingers and hand. He inspected the blood before turning back to the tree. Realization dawned in Braethen’s mind: This was Grant’s cradle, the one he’d spoken of as part of his punishment, the place to which his striplings were brought and left for him to either place or raise.
Tenderly, the man’s arms eased inside the hollowed tree and withdrew an infant. Even from where he stood, Braethen saw the pallor of the child’s skin and the darkness around its eyes and mouth. Grant knelt on the hard earth beneath the dead tree and cradled the dead babe in his arms.
None of them moved, observing a moment of silent reflection for the passing of a life that never knew a hope. The thought of the baby wriggling its arms in ignorance as the serpent coiled nearby seared Braethen’s senses. He shut his eyes to the image. A distant part of him wanted to avenge the child, but the culprit already lay dead near Grant’s feet. A horrible feeling of helplessness gripped him. Whatever his own comfort in taking up the sword, he would forever be too late to change the ending that lay in the exile’s arms. He thought of Wendra then, and wondered how deeply her own wound and scar must be. How she might wrestle with the loss she could not change?
Braethen took an involuntary step forward, then another. The unrealized possibilities of the babe weighed on his mind, as did the injustice and cruelty of abandoning a child this way, leaving it to the caprice of a world it could not comprehend. One hand sought his sword instinctively, as if to affirm his willingness to stand against such things, while in his mind he sought old tales given him by A’Posian, something to allay this terrible iniquity. But there was none, and he stood staring at a surrogate father mourning a child he’d never known.
Mira went to the snake and knelt to inspect it. She and Vendanj exchanged a knowing look. “Hostaugh,” she said. “Not a serpent from the Scar. You won’t find these south of the Pall … unless someone brought it here.”
“What are you saying?” Braethen asked, already sure of the answer.
“The serpent was placed in the tree by Quietgiven.” Mira stood and kicked the snake away with a flick of her boot.
Grant turned, catching a look of the sun low on the eastern sky. “We’re not late, not by more than half a glass.” His voice came questioningly but with resignation. “This is the appointed day, the appointed hour. The child is cold.” He pulled the infant’s blanket around its shoulders as though to warm it.
“It is the poison,” Vendanj said. “The hostaugh is a sidewinder conceived in the Bourne. Its bite steals life to invigorate the beast itself.”
“Why would they do this?” Braethen asked. “I thought Quietgiven sought life for its own use. Wouldn’t they have taken the child?”
“The Quiet seeks Forda in any form, but in an infant it seeks something very specific,” Vendanj explained, speaking directly to Grant.
Grant stared up at the Sheason, and a secret passed between them in a look.
“It is a warning,” Vendanj said, coming closer to peer down at the child. “The child’s parents would surely have cleansed the cradle before placing the child within. No. The serpent was put there after the child’s parents had left, and the child was left to you as a sign.”
“They are mistaken if they think I can be dissuaded over the death of one stripling.” Grant looked away at the vastness of the Scar, a resolute expression settling over the creases in his deeply tanned face.
“It isn’t your care for new wards they mean to disrupt,” Vendanj said. “They will seek to destroy you if you cannot be of use to them in attaining their desire.”
“And what is that?” Braethen asked, irritation edging his voice. So many private conversations and old relationships clouded the Sheason’s exchange with the exile. He felt like the village yokel left out of a conversation between men and women of consequence.
Vendanj looked at him but did not
answer, while Mira climbed to the top of the hill and checked their back trail. She returned quickly and shook her head—no one followed them.
Grant gave the babe a final look, his patient, steady eyes acknowledging the end of a cycle, though one closed prematurely. Braethen saw a tenderness in the man he hadn’t seen before. Then the exile gently passed the child to Mira to hold and began digging a grave. Braethen watched as Vendanj knelt beside Grant and the two men dug together in silence. Beneath a dead tree, they scooped the barren earth that would be the final ground for the infant. Braethen joined them, drawing his sword to break up the packed dirt. Vendanj looked once at him as he put the sword to this new use, but the Sheason appeared to approve, and Braethen’s heart gladdened in the act of honoring this tiny life in this small way.
* * *
As the three men stabbed at the earth to create a grave, Mira looked down at the child in her arms. She cradled it close, feelings both maternal and mournful touching her in quiet waves. The face of the babe was pallid but peaceful. And looking upon the infant girl, the promise of her future frozen forever in her delicate features … Mira fought a rising wrath that sought escape.
There would be a time for that.
Now, she honored this small life with the care and attentiveness she deserved but had never received in life. Mira thought about her own mother—her birth mother—whose face she couldn’t remember, and wondered what providence had kept her from being like the child in her arms at that very moment.
The abandonment of a small life, whatever the cause, caused an ache in Mira’s chest. It made the decision awaiting her beyond Recityv a heavy burden, a decision that might affect the success of the Sheason’s ultimate plans.
Somehow, staring into the unrealized promise of this little girl galvanized Mira’s need to act, but put her further from understanding which path to choose. Only one certainty filled her under the hard sun of the Scar and the unmoving body of this little one: If she could have given her life to save this babe, she would have.
* * *
When the child lay in its final slumber and the earth had been replaced, the four lingered a moment in the stillness. Then Grant mounted. “You have one cycle of my life, Sheason. Then I will be back at this tree. Not one more life will fall because I was not here to receive it.”
Then he raced to the east, leaving the others to catch up. Mira and Braethen mounted. Vendanj lingered a moment.
The Sheason looked down at the small patch of dirt that humped slightly above the earth around it. In the barren confines of this inhospitable place they had laid to rest a life come unnaturally to its end. The hope and path that had lain in store for the child, which had been stolen by malice and cowardice, brought the Sheason’s indignation surging to the surface.
To send a message, a defenseless babe …
Vendanj shook with the need to do something. The foul deed could not go unavenged.
But it would have to wait until next he came upon the Quiet. The helplessness of it, the vision in his mind of a baby struck unwitting by this viper and crying in pain and confusion and desperate need of the comfort it had sought and rightly deserved in coming to this world, this life … Vendanj fell to his knees and wept silently. The bitterness of it stole his strength and will to go on, to even stand.
What lived in the soul of those who served Quietus that they would do such a thing? He could not fathom it. In that moment Vendanj saw a glimpse into the horror that stood in store for the family of man should the veil fall. He now understood, more intimately than ever before, what the histories called the Placing: when the fathers had hidden the Whited One and his abominations from the world.
There could be no chance at greatness, at living to make this world a place worthy of its creation, if the breath of a child were to be snuffed before it could live to know that potential.
The anguish seared through him, and the Sheason raised his head and screamed all the pain in his heart into the pale blue sky. With the sound of it still echoing out on the hard, barren waste of the Scar, Vendanj thrust his hands into the grave of the babe and spoke the words of his heart, and gave unto that plot of land a portion of his spirit forevermore.
Spontaneously from the gravesite came grass and flowers, exuding their scents of life around the vale of the cradle that had been the death of the child.
When the burn of his grief subsided and his great shout had echoed its last, Vendanj drew his hands out of the now fertile soil. “Good-bye, small one,” he said. “Though unknown to us, you go loved into your next life.”
Then Vendanj took his knife and found the serpent. He cut off its head and put it in his pouch. He also reclaimed the fold of the child’s blanket they had torn away before burying her, the portion that bore a small stain of blood.
These tokens he kept, and left the babe to its rest.
* * *
At meridian, they passed the boundary of the Scar and felt the cool whisper of breezes among the trees and undergrowth. Braethen had never considered that life was something he might actually smell, but he drew deep breaths of the scent of bark and needles and fallen leaves and moist earth. Mira scouted ahead, leaving Braethen to his two silent companions. Near a brook they stopped and ate a midday meal, speaking no words.
They moved on quickly, and stopped again at twilight, the moon rising fast and large.
Braethen cast his eyes heavenward and thought of Tahn, Sutter, and Wendra. In the Hollows, he would have come to serve as an author. His father A’Posian had taught him certain knowledge from rare texts, and with his education he would have served them.
But not protected them.
He hadn’t been a sodalist then. He knew it now. Hadn’t been a defender of anything except his father’s library.
But now he’d been given a sodalist’s sword, and by a member of the Order of Sheason that the Sodality had been created to serve. The blade upon his sigil, and the quill that danced its length, had been forever only a metaphor to him, though he had read fragments of the histories and stories authors had penned for generations. In the Hollows, the reality of what his crest really meant might never have been known to him.
Braethen dropped a hand to the steel hanging at his hip. The feel of it still caused many emotions in him: pride, willingness to stand, to defend; revulsion at the intention of a sword; despair that each time he hefted its balanced weight, the weapon became more comfortable in his hand.
Braethen stole a look at the backs of the two dark figures who had led him out of the Scar. Vendanj and Grant sat close together, confidential discussion passing between them. Lunar light carved them dully from the black landscape that stretched before them: two equally inscrutable stories sitting side by side. In their mystery, the two men felt to Braethen like a couplet of prophecy. The thought sent a chill over him, because his own story was now inextricably linked to theirs.
Finally, Braethen couldn’t help but ask: “Why are you rewriting the Charter?”
Grant turned in the darkness. “Because I’m tired of fighting.”
Braethen recalled the weapons racks at Grant’s home. “Then why teach that skill to the children who live with you?”
“Because sooner or later, I know they’ll need it. A lot of time to consider is what I have, sodalist. A lot of time to think about the ways that a man brings angry hands against you. Days and years to teach my wards and myself that personal freedom is something to safeguard, even if it involves risking physical harm.” Grant put his dinner aside on a fallen log and nestled down with his back to the wood. “I anticipate, my friend. A thousand days I’ve walked through the strokes and counterstrokes of fight after fight. Different weapons, different opponents of varying sizes and ability. I’ve imagined different terrains over which battles might rage, compensated for wounds to myself or my enemy. All up here.” He tapped his temple twice lightly. “And when I could think of no more, I considered them again, and again, seeing the results each time, varying the level of ability in my
foe and anticipating his next stroke based on a hundred factors. And when I was done, I taught my striplings. And we practice. It is all there is to do in the Scar.”
“Except drawing a new Charter,” Vendanj put in.
“Well that, too,” Grant conceded, his smile a tad more bitter in the concession.
“You still haven’t answered why, though,” Braethen pushed.
“You. A stripling from the Hollows carrying a glowing sword and brash enough to be ready to hold it against a stranger.” He pointed at Braethen. “And an inquisitive fellow beyond that, always ready with a question, even when words ought to be left alone. The answer is: Maybe I want to believe this world has hope, could be redeemed. Or maybe it’s none of your concern.”
Braethen gave an embarrassed grin. He saw Grant and Vendanj share a genuine smile over the exchange, but their separate thoughts turned their countenances dark soon after, the weight of their ruminations lingering upon them until sleep relieved the tension that puckered their brows. Braethen found it difficult to sleep. He sat up watching the two men and every so often spotting Mira. What am I doing in such company? The question followed him down to slumber, where it played upon him in dreams of swords and books, each biting flesh and each answering a call to arms.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
A Servant’s Tale
Sutter sat in the dark, his wrists and ankles bound with chains, staring across at a troupe of scops.
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